[metafugitive]

If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?

Eddie is being naive. Of course, they won't shut them down, but these companies are operated as predatory monopolies. If they don't cooperate, they are threatened with anti-trust scrutiny.

Just because the FCC has been deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to corporate media does not mean that they could not be instructed by Commissars of the Police State to start attending to the business that are pretending to do.

[justlurking]

Eddie is being naive. Of course, they won't shut them down, but these companies are operated as predatory monopolies. If they don't cooperate, they are threatened with anti-trust scrutiny.

Or as Qwest experienced, you are excluded from consideration for government contracts, and they find a way to indict your CEO for insider trading.